Inc. writer Michelle Van Slyke reports that the key to having a successful year in marketing is ... planning. And, 'tis the season to start since the end of the year is fast approaching.Van Slyke shares some advice from her own personal experience to make next year your best year yet."Start with ReflectionEvery planning meeting should begin by reflecting on the prior year. What worked? What didn't? What did we think wasn't going to work, but did? The answers...

Read More

Bad reviews can be good for business, as we pointed out in this post. And, a spoof of your brand on Saturday Night Live can raise awareness of it.According to Adweek, When SNL featured a sketch with Kristen Stewart, Beck Bennet and Aidy Bryant making fun "of the astronomical cost of Farrow & Ball paints and their flowery descriptions, as well as the fact that you 'can't touch' the finished paint -- with some digs at the English spelling...

Read More

What used to be called Singles Day (November 11), and now is referred to as Global Shopping Festival, continues to be the "world's biggest shopping day," according to Adweek.Lisa Lacy reports: "It was another record-breaking day for retail as Chinese ecommerce platform Alibaba rang up 268.4 billion yuan ($38.4 billion)."Lacy compares the day with two shopping dates we're more familiar with: "Even on the biggest shopping days of the year for Americans, the U.S. doesn’t come close: Consumers spent...

Read More

To help live entertainment marketers better understand what matters most to our patrons, Twitter, reports David Cohen for Adweek, "analyzed billions of tweets from Jan. 1, 2016, through June 30, 2019, and boiled them down into 18 emerging trends that highlight fundamental shifts in culture in the U.S."With this insight into what's on our patrons' minds, we can, hopefully, start and participate more effectively in social media conversations.Cohen shares six overarching themes. Read three of them below, and then...

Read More

You might be able to name all of Santa’s reindeer -- Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and Rudolph -- but can you tell Dancer apart from Comet? Or Dasher apart from Vixen? Guessing not. Rudolph, on the other hand, has a little something extra that makes him stand out. In a reindeer herd of holiday events, does yours have a red nose? That is, does it stand out from the bunch? Every holiday season, we see a massive increase...

Read More

Happy Halloween. To celebrate, we’re sharing an oldie-but-goodie post from Jim ... with a Halloween theme:Word Stock Market: SpooktacularThe Word Stock Market is an occasional feature on SellingOut.com, where I will tell you whether to buy, sell or hold a certain word based on whether that word has a strong future or has seen better days. For example, if you’d bought the word “hybrid” 10 years ago (when it meant a cross between a horse and a donkey, not...

Read More

When we create marketing content, it's good to keep this fact in mind:"According to Chartbeat: 55% of people read your post for just 15 seconds or less," reports Search Engine Journal.We've got to grab our patrons' attention fast, and SEJ shares some tips on "how to optimize your blog content for 55% who skim while still delighting the 45% who don’t." "Keep Intro Paragraphs Short & Sweet Most people get carried away with introductions. Tons of intros can feel like their...

Read More

One strategy to attract new patrons and gain exposure is to create partnerships -- with organizations similar to yours and with ones in other industries.The social media video app TikTok has a knack for partnering up. David Cohen reports for Adweek, "TikTok has entered into ... partnerships ... with Girls Who Code to support women in technology in the #MarchForSisterhood campaign, with Conservation International to address marine plastic pollution in the #SaveOurOceans challenge and with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty...

Read More

We've got one less weekend to plan for holiday marketing this year."In fact," reports Vincent DeSantis for Adweek, "2019 has the shortest holiday season since 2013."DeSantis lists a number of dates to keep in mind this season, including Single's Day (Nov. 11) and Green Monday (Dec. 9).He also outlines a number of strategies to drive more sales, like: "During Cyber Week Retailers are planning their tactics not by the day, but by the hour. It may make sense to start Cyber...

Read More

Here's one way to build excitement for your season: Add an element of surprise.Becca Martin-Brown reports for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette: "Jason Miller, the executive director of the Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra, has an interesting theory about this year's season announcement. He isn't going to make one. Instead, he says, he wants to surprise audiences as the year goes along."Miller tells Martin-Brown: "We want to announce little nuggets at a time and build as much excitement as we can....

Read More